Will a former refugee’s trip to see his dying father cost him his status in Canada?

2022/10/26 Leave a comment

Understand the personal pain but it does undermine his claim to refugee status as it does with others who return to the country they fled. Hard to have it both ways:

When Medhi Ghamoshi Ramandi was finally granted asylum in Canada in 2019, one of the first things he did was leave the country.

The Iranian man wanted to see his wife and two children, whom he had not seen for six years since his escape from that country’s regime.

Aware of the safety risks of returning to his homeland, he got a refugee travel document from Canada and flew his family to Armenia, where he rented a place for three months so they could try to make up for some of their time lost.

“We had not seen each other for six years and we reunited in Armenia,” recalls Ramandi. “We did a lot of sightseeing there. We had very good memories of the first weeks there. I felt alive again.”

But then came the news of his father being diagnosed with an acute form of colon cancer.

“We didn’t think my father would last six months. There were photos of him with his stomach torn open and stuff like that,” says Ramandi. “My father was pleading, ‘Please come back so I can see you one last time.’ That’s what made me decide to go back.”

Unable to travel to his homeland with his refugee travel document, Ramandi took a chance to apply for an Iranian passport in Armenia and crossed a land border into Iran, at 2 a.m., hoping he wouldn’t be flagged.

Once inside the country, he says, he holed up in his parents’ house before sneaking into the hospital late at night and staying at his father’s bedside till the morning for fear of being spotted and reported to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

After 12 days in Iran with his dying father, the 50-year-old returned to Toronto on Sept. 23, 2019, via Armenia. 

He was immediately stopped and held for an investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency.

His offence was possessing a passport from the same regime that he had run away from and “reavailing” himself to Iran. 

To the Canadian authorities, that suggested he no longer required Canada’s protection and that he could be stripped of his refugee status.

“I had to go and see my father. He was dying,” said a sobbing Ramandi, whose application for permanent residence has been suspended since 2019 while officials are investigating whether to refer him to the refugee board and have his protected status ended.

It is a process known as cessation. The number of new cessation applications against individuals who have been granted asylum in Canada — many of them already permanent residents, sometimes for years — rose to 399 in 2021 from just 137 in 2013. The then-Conservative government, looking to crack down on bogus refugees, changed the law to not only go after former refugees’ protected status but also their permanent residence.

Those who return to their country of origin or simply apply for or renew their old passports, even just to visit a third country, can be pursued by Canadian border officials and lose both their refugee status and permanent residence, and ultimately face deportation.

“Technology is improving, so people’s movements are easier to track,” says immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo. “There is a backlog that has now slowly moved through the system and there are investigations going on. 

“We’re seeing now an apex of cases.”

As of the end of June, there were 572 cessation applications before the Immigration and Refugee Board, down from a backlog of 781 cases in 2020.

Under the immigration law, Canada can take away someone’s protected status if they have:

  • “Voluntarily reavailed” themselves of the protection of their country of nationality;
  • Reacquired their nationality, as in obtaining or renewing a passport from the country of persecution;
  • “Re-established” in that country; or
  • When the reasons for which the person sought refugee protection no longer exist.

Lawyer Justin Jian-Yi Toh said investigations in cessation proceedings are often triggered when individuals are flagged by border agents upon returning from their country of origin or when they are found to have travelled back from a third country with a passport issued from the state they fled. 

Many are also caught when they are asked to provide detailed travel records to fulfil the physical residence requirement for the renewal of their residence cards or citizenship applications.

“Of course, for the average person, they don’t think about all that stuff when they get a passport,” said Toh. “They think, ‘I need a passport to travel. A passport is a travelling licence.’ That’s it.”

In the eyes of Canadian officials, when that happens, it means the refugee traveller has restored relations with their country of origin and no longer needs Canada’s protection.

“Then you see a situation where, for example, people get refugee status in Canada,” said Toh, “but then their parents get very sick and they say to themselves, ‘I’m in danger in this country, but this is my mom, and this is my dad. Maybe I can pop in and see them one last time without people noticing. I’m there and then get out quickly.”

How a court ruling could change things

The refugee board has allowed the majority of the cessation requests referred to it by the border agency, with an acceptance rate above 80 per cent. In 2020, it reached an all-time high, at 95 per cent.

But both Bellissimo and Toh hope that the rising trend will be blunted by a Federal Court of Appeal decision earlier this year that found each cessation proceeding should be “fact-dependent” and should not be applied in “a mechanistic or rote manner.”

The case, represented by the two lawyers, involved Maria Camila Galindo Camayo, who came to Canada for asylum with her mother and brothers from Colombia when she was 12 and who was granted protection in Canada in 2010 as a minor dependent.

After she became a permanent resident in 2012, she was found to have obtained and renewed her Colombian passport, and visited her homeland five times as a teen and adult to visit and care for her father, who suffers from mental illness and recurrent cancer, and to attend a humanitarian mission to aid children in poverty. She also used the passport to travel to Cuba, the United States and Mexico.

When in Colombia, concerned for her own safety, she hired professional armed guards, travelled in multiple cars, taking different routes, and remained inside family members’ homes as much as possible, she told the refugee board.

In 2017, border agents referred Camayo to the refugee board, which took away her protected status and permanent residence in 2019, despite her arguments that she was unaware of the cessation laws and their consequences.

Although on paper Camayo met the three key elements in assessing someone’s return to a country of persecution — voluntary, intentional and actual physical visit — the Federal Court overruled the refugee board decision, saying that the conclusion was unreasonable.

In dismissing the government’s appeal, the Federal Court of Appeal said the test for cessation should not be applied in “a mechanistic or rote manner” and it provided detailed guidance to assist the refugee board in assessing individual nuances leading to someone reavailing themselves to the country that they once feared.

“The focus throughout the analysis should be on whether the refugee’s conduct — and the inferences that can be drawn from it — can reliably indicate that the refugee intended to waive the protection of the country of asylum,” the appeal court said in sending the case back to the refugee board for redetermination.

‘My father was dying of cancer’

Ramandi said no one ever advised him not to use an Iranian passport or about the potential consequences. He said he tried to keep a low profile when sneaking back into Iran because he worried about his safety. The visit to Tehran wasn’t even part of his plan as he only learned about his father’s hospitalization toward the end of his three-month trip in Armenia.

“My father was dying of cancer. … The immigration issue didn’t even cross my mind,” said Ramandi, a Protestant Christian, who fled religious persecution in Iran and arrived in Canada in 2013 with the help of smugglers.

Still distraught from leaving his father and family behind, he said he was terrified when he was stopped by the border agents at Toronto’s Pearson airport.

“I told them about seeing my family in Armenia and about my father in Iran. I told them everything about the trip,” Ramandi, a baker, said through an interpreter. “I had no idea about the immigration implications.”

His father died a few months after his visit and Ramandi has not travelled or seen his wife, son, 18, and daughter, 14, while his permanent residence application is on hold.

“I came here when I was 41 and I’m now 50. It’s been almost 10 years and I’ve only been able to spend three months with my family in Armenia,” said Ramandi. “It’s so hard. I don’t have any direction for my life anymore.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Wazana said those with “ceased” status are also barred from appeals and risk assessments before removals for a year and are only eligible for humanitarian considerations if there are children involved and their interests are affected, or if there’s a serious mental or medical health issue.

The law, he said, has caused a lot of misery for these former refugees, few understanding that their protected status can be taken away even after they become permanent residents.

“Many people don’t apply for citizenship because they’re under the mistaken impression that permanent residency is, as it sounds, permanent. Unfortunately, it’s far from it,” he said. “Really, no one is safe until they obtain citizenship.”

Wazana has a client who fled political persecution in Libya and returned to see family only after the authoritarian regime of Moammar Gadhafi fell and it was safe for him to visit. Even though Canada has deferred all removals to Libya due to the volatile political situation there, the border agency pursued cessation of the man’s permanent resident status.

“Even using that passport from your home country to travel to a third country could potentially lead to a cessation application,” said Wazana. “My advice is just to forget about that passport, put it away and never use it again.”

Source: Will a former refugee’s trip to see his dying father cost him his status in Canada?

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Douglas Todd: Chinese travellers to Canada plunge. What does it mean?

2022/10/22 Leave a comment

Visitor visas from China have also plumeted, by close to 80 percent compared to pre-pandemic (January to August, 2022 compared to 2019):

Three years ago, 55 jumbo jets from China were touching down at Vancouver International Airport every week.

Now there are only eight flights a week from the world’s most-populous country.

There has been an almost similar plunge in the proportion of Chinese nationals applying for Canada’s 10-year visas. A related decline means fewer people from China are seeking student visas, and showing relatively modest interest in permanent-residence status.

China’s draconian pandemic lockdowns — which are more strict than anywhere in the world — have reduced travel in and out of the country, with the number of international air passengers across all of China’s airports falling from 74 million in 2019 to 1.5 million last year.

But that’s not the only reason for the decline.

With China’s Communist leaders poised this month to hand strongman Xi Jinping an almost unprecedented third five-year mandate, crackdowns are increasing on Chinese citizens, including through digital surveillance, censorship, arrest of dissenters, party infiltration of private businesses — and far less travel to other countries. Most observers believe obsessive control will be China’s new normal for a long time.

The drastic decline in the transnational mobility of the people of China feeds into the debate in the West over what it means to have far less engagement with China’s regime and its citizens, even while many are not necessarily tied to the authoritarian government.

In response to tighter controls in China, Canada has been shifting. While five years ago people from China made up the largest group of visitors and students, Indian nationals now comprise by far the largest group.

Two new books argue each side of the China engagement coin. In The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership, economist Fred Bergsten argues corporate engagement has been a success, despite tragic failures on the human rights front.

Bergsten belongs to the camp that champions the free global movement of money and humans, saying Western countries should continue to offer a warm reception to entrepreneurs, students, workers and visitors from China. It’s good for business.

However, another book, by Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg, titled Getting China Wrong, calls the West’s engagement with China a gamble that didn’t pay off. He says the challenge now is how to reduce ties to a threatening regime run on draconian Leninist principles.

Wherever one comes down on such arguments, the reality is the flow of people from China into the U.S., Canada and other Western countries has reduced dramatically.

Canada’s travel industry is among those hurting, especially in B.C. And that’s only partly because, as Destination B.C. official Kristen Learned says, visitors from China spent the most of any tourists: $2,021 each.

In 2019, more than 15,500 people were flying each week into Vancouver from China, now it’s just 2,600. That’s as airport officials say international flights from every other nation are almost back to pre-COVID levels.

Three years ago Canada brought in 712,000 visitors from China, who stayed an average of four weeks. Destination B.C. figures show 334,000 of them spent their days in B.C., which made them to the province’s second-largest international tourist market, after the U.S.

In 2019, travellers from China bought over $586 million worth of goods and services while on the West Coast, especially on hotels, luxury resorts and Airbnbs, as well as dining out while visiting relatives.

But by midsummer of this year, only 36,000 visitors from China had flown into Canada, with just 18,000 to B.C. That’s reflects a drastic overall rate of decline in three years of about 91 per cent.

Meanwhile, travellers into Canada from India, Britain and France are soaring.

Additional data reveal just a few years ago people from China were by far the biggest group applying for Canada’s popular 10-year visas.

Since the 10-year visa program began in 2014, allowing people to travel to the country for six months at a time as many times as they want, Chinese citizens have accounted for 3.2 million of the 13 million visas issued.

But a sharp drop in visa applications from China occurred even before the pandemic hit. At the same time, requests from India skyrocketed.

As a result, by midsummer of 2022 a relatively low number of people from China, 49,000, had applied this year for the 10-year visas. In the same period, applications from India skyrocketed to 355,000.

The highly valued multiple-entry visas are generally a benefit to Canada’s economy, say immigration lawyers. But they caution they can be abused by “shadow investors” in housing to avoid property and income taxes in Canada.

Educational relationships between China and Canada have also declined, although not as precipitously.

In 2017, study visa application rates from both China and India were equal — amounting to roughly 82,000 students a year from each giant nation, together accounting for almost half of all foreign students.

But in 2021, the second year of the pandemic, the numbers of Chinese international students seeking to come to Canada dropped to 56,000, while expanding from other countries — especially India, at 169,000.

The trend has continued into October of this year, with students from India accounting for 38 per cent of all study visa applicants and those from China just 11 per cent.

Meanwhile, the number of Chinese nationals gaining admission to Canada as permanent residents remains flat — at the rate of about 30,000 a year, compared to 127,000 from India.

The immigration path into Canada is not as strong an indicator of China’s internal politics as other measures — because anyone from China who becomes a Canadian citizen, technically, forgoes their Chinese citizenship and the ties that go with it.

What does it mean? As Xi tightens his hold on power, no one absolutely knows what’s on in his mind.

But even figures who advocate the unrestrained movement of financial and human capital realize Xi is dangerously bent on weakening democratic governments and further policing Chinese citizens in both his country and abroad.

This month, the pro-free-trade Economist magazine called on the West to continue to “welcome Chinese students, executives and scientists, rather than treat them as potential spies. Remember, always, that the beef should be with tyranny, not the Chinese people.”

That appears to sum up the federal government’s open approach, even while China’s autocrats are ensuring there will be fewer people-to-people connections between our two countries.

Source: Douglas Todd: Chinese travellers to Canada plunge. What does it mean?

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A Shrinking Town at the Center of France’s Culture Wars

2022/10/21 Leave a comment

Of interest and not declining rural populations of course not unique to France:

A shrinking town set among cow pastures in Brittany seems an unlikely setting for France’s soul searching over immigration and identity.

The main square is named after the date in 1944 that local resistance fighters were rounded up by Nazi soldiers, many never seen again. It offers a cafe run by a social club, a museum dedicated to the Brittany spaniel and a hefty serving of rural flight — forlorn empty buildings, their grills pulled down and windows shuttered, some for decades.

So when town council members heard of a program that could renovate the dilapidated buildings and fill much-needed jobs such as nurses’ aides and builders by bringing in skilled refugees, it seemed like a winning lottery ticket.

“It hit me like lightning,” said Laure-Line Inderbitzin, a deputy mayor. “It sees refugees not as charity, but an opportunity.”

But what town leaders saw as a chance for rejuvenation, others saw as evidence of a “great replacement” of native French people that has become a touchstone of anger and anxiety, particularly on the hard right.

In no time, tiny Callac, a town of just 2,200, was divided, the focus of national attention and the scene of competing protests for and against the plan. Today it sits at the intersection of complex issues that have bedeviled France for many years: how to deal with mounting numbers of migrants arriving in the country and how to breathe new life into withering towns, before it is too late.

As in many towns across France, Callac’s population has been in slow decline since the end of the Trente Glorieuses, the 30-year postwar growth stretch when living standards and wages rose. Today, around half the people who remain are retirees. The biggest employer is the nursing home.

A wander around downtown reveals dozens of empty storefronts, where florists, dry-cleaners and photo studios once stood. The town’s last dental office announced in July it was closing — the stress of continually turning new patients away, when her patient list topped 9,000, was too much for Françoise Méheut.

She stopped sleeping, she burst into tears over the dental chair and she turned to antidepressants before finally deciding to retire early.

“It’s a catastrophe,” Dr. Méheut said. “I have the impression of abandoning people.”

“I am selling, and no one is buying,” she added of her business. “If there was a dentist among the refugees, I would be thrilled.”

While many in town say there are no jobs, the council did a survey and found the opposite — 75 unfilled salaried jobs, from nursing assistants to contractors, despite the local 18 percent unemployment rate.

The council still hopes to carry out its plan in cooperation with the Merci Endowment Fund, an organization created by a wealthy Parisian family that had made its fortune in high-end children’s clothing and wanted to give back.

In 2016, the matriarch of the family volunteered to host an Afghan refugee in the family mansion near the Eiffel Tower. Her three sons, seeing the joy he brought to their mother’s life and the talents he offered, wanted to expand the idea broadly.

“The idea is to create a win-win situation,” said the eldest son, Benoit Cohen, a French filmmaker and author who wrote a book about the experience called “Mohammad, My Mother and Me.”

“They will help revitalize the village.”

The Merci project has proposed handpicking asylum seekers, recruiting for skills as well as a desire to live in the countryside. Then, the Cohens promise to develop a wraparound program to help them assimilate, with local French courses and apartments in refurbished buildings.

The plan also called for new community spaces and training programs for all — locals and refugees together — something that most excited Ms. Inderbitzin, the project’s local champion on the council and a teacher in the local middle school.

The town has more than 50 nonprofit clubs and associations, including one that runs the local cinema, and another that delivers food to hungry families in town.

“Social development for all — that’s in Callac’s genes,” said Ms. Inderbitzin. “It’s a virtuous circle. They could bring lots of energy, culture, youth.”

Not everyone is as excited at that prospect. A petition launched by three residents opposing the project has more than 10,000 signatures — many from far beyond Callac..

But even in town, some grumble about lack of consultation or transparency. They worry Callac will lose its Frenchness and will trade its small-town tranquillity for big-city problems. Others question the motives of a rich family in Paris meddling in their rural home.

“We aren’t lab rats. We aren’t here for them to experiment on,” said Danielle Le Men, a retired teacher in town who is starting a community group to stop the project, which she fears will bring “radical Islam” to the community.

Catching wind of the dispute, the right-wing anti-immigrant party Reconquest, run by the failed presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, organized a protest in September, warning the project would bring dangerous insecurity and complaining that it would introduce halal stores and girls in head scarves.

There was a time, she said, when she offered billiards and karaoke and kept the taps running late. But with the town’s youth departed, she recalibrated her closing time to match her remaining clientele’s schedule — 8 p.m.

“Why would we give jobs to outsiders?” she said. “We should help people here first.”

Standing on the street outside his small bar, which doubles as a cluttered antiques store, her neighbor, Paul Le Contellac, assessed the proposal from another angle.

His uncle married a refugee who had fled Spain with her family during the civil war and found shelter in this village. Later, when France was occupied by Nazi Germany, his grandmother harbored resistance fighters in her attic.

“This is a town that has always welcomed refugees,” said Mr. Le Contellac. “Callac is not ugly, but it’s not pretty either. It needs some new energy.”

While immigration may hold the potential to do that, the issue remains hotly contested, even while the migration crisis had been dampened by the pandemic.

Today, as the pandemic appears to wane, the numbers of asylum seekers arriving to France is climbing again, threatening to restore the issue’s volatility.

Since the height of the migration crisis several years ago, the government of President Emmanuel Macron has attempted to split the difference on its immigration policy.

On the one hand, it has aimed to deter asylum applicants by increasing police at the border and by cutting back some state services.

On the other, for those who are accepted as refugees, it has poured resources into French lessons and employment programs to ease their integration.

The government has also tried to disperse asylum seekers outside of Paris, where services are strained, housing is hard to find and large tent camps have sprung up.

Recently, Mr. Macron announced that he wanted to formalize the policy in a new immigration bill, sending asylum seekers from the dense urban centers, already plagued with social and economic problems, to the “rural areas, that are losing people.”

The plan is a lot like that being put in place already in Callac, which, paradoxically, has been receiving refugee families since 2015, about 40 people at present, with little or no notice, like many small French towns.

Mohammad Ebrahim heard the noise of the warring protests from his living room window, but had no idea what the commotion was about — certainly not about him, his wife and four children, who arrived a year ago.

Kurds who escaped Al Qaeda in Syria, they have felt nothing but welcome, flashing photos on their cellphones of community meals and celebrations they have been invited to. But the perks of village hospitality are offset by the logistics of living in the countryside without a car. Training, medical appointments, even regular French classes are all far away.

When he hears the plan to offer wraparound services and school in Callac, Mr. Ebrahim smiles broadly. “Then we could go to French class every day,” he said.

Callac may now prove to be a testing ground of whether a more structured approach can work and divisions be overcome.

“This became about French politics,” says Sylvie Lagrue, a local volunteer who drives refugees to doctor’s appointments and helps them set up their internet. “Now, everyone hopes this will quiet down, and we continue with the program.”

Though the project still has no official budget, timeline or target number of asylum seekers to be resettled, the town council nevertheless is tiptoeing ahead.

It recently bought a hulking abandoned stone school, rising like a ghost in the middle of town, and announced it planned to convert it into the “heart” of the project — with a refugee reception area, as well as a community nursery and a co-working space.

The Merci fund has already bought the building where the town’s last book store closed in August. It now plans to reopen the store for the community, while housing a first family of asylum seekers in the upstairs apartment.

“The beginning has to be slow,” Mr. Cohen said. “We have to see if it works. We don’t want to scare people.”

Source: A Shrinking Town at the Center of France’s Culture Wars

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Business Council of Canada urges Chrystia Freeland to focus on energy, deficit, immigration [more] in fall fiscal update

2022/10/21 Leave a comment

Little surprise that the BCC is calling for further increases. Will be interesting to see how this call is answered given Minister Freeland’s signal that new program funding has to come from within existing funding and the expected economic downturn and possible recession:

…

On immigration, the letter says 80 per cent of employers have reported having difficulty finding skilled workers, which is contributing to the delay or cancellation of major projects.

“With an aging work force and a declining labour participation rate, Canada’s future prosperity depends on further increases to the annual number of economic-class applicants who are granted permanent resident status,” the letter states.

The business council recommends that Canada’s immigration targets for 2023-2025 should be equal to 1.2 per cent of the Canadian population, with 65 per cent of new permanent residents entering the country under an economic-class program. That category includes those who are selected for factors such as their ability to meet labour market needs or to start, operate or invest in a business.

Both targets are slightly higher than the government’s current plans, which would welcome 451,000 permanent residents in 2024, of which 267,750 would be from the economic category.

“In support of this goal, we recommend that the fall economic statement provide additional funding to rapidly modernize immigration IT systems, open new processing centres, and increase the ranks of border agents and settlement services personnel,” the council’s letter states.

Source: Business Council of Canada urges Chrystia Freeland to focus on energy, deficit, immigration in fall fiscal update

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – August 2022 update

2022/10/21 Leave a comment

NEW DATA on Settlement Services, showing an overall decline compared to the pre-pandemic with only partial recovery. Afghanistan and Ukraine have shown the greatest increase given the number of refugees from those two countries. Pre-arrival information and orientation, language assessment and resettlement assistance have increased the most.

While the government has made some progress in reducing backlogs with respect to temporary residents and citizenship, it has not made progress with respect to Permanent Residents.

PRs: Decline compared to July. YTD 308,000,  2021 same period 222,000.

TRs/IMP: Increase compared to July. YTD 280,000, 2021 same period, 228,000.

TRs/TFWP: Slight decrease compared to July. YTD 100,000, 2021 same period 90,000.

Students: Large seasonal increase compared to July (may reflect processing issues). YTD 366,000, 2021 same period 295,000.

Asylum claimants: Stable. YTD 53,000, 2021 same period 10,000.

Settlement Services (July): Decrease compared to June. YTD 1,031,000, 2021 same period 918,000.

Citizenship: Increase compared to July. YTD 248,000, 2021 same period 55,000.

Visitor Visas. Increase compared to July. YTD 752,000, 2021 same period 67,000.

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

After raising hope, Biden still lacks climate migration plan

2022/10/21 Leave a comment

Of note (not sure any country does):

Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden issued what was widely hailed as a landmark executive order calling for the U.S. government to study and plan for the impact of climate change on migration. And less than a year later, his administration released the first U.S. government assessment of the vast rippling effects of a warming Earth on international security and displacement of people.

Advocates praised both moves as bold steps toward the world finally recognizing the need to offer refuge to people fleeing not just wars and persecution but also climate calamities such as drought and rising seas.

Since then, however, the Biden administration has done little more than study the idea, advocates say.

The government has been slow to implement recommendations made a year ago by its own agencies, including the National Security Council, on how to address climate migration.

Key to progress on the issue was creation of an interagency working group to coordinate government response to both domestic and international climate migration.

But the group, which was supposed to oversee policies, strategies and budgets to help climate-displaced people, still has not been established, according to a person with knowledge of the administration’s efforts who was not authorized to speak publicly. The person said the group is expected to hold its first meeting later this fall. The administration declined to identify which agencies will participate in the working group.

Meanwhile, Biden’s report to Congress about his plans for refugee admissions to the U.S. in the 2023 budget year made scant mention of climate change.

Advocates once energized by the administration’s promises to embrace climate-displaced people say they have grown disillusioned.

“It’s been really disappointing,” said Ama Francis, climate migration expert at the International Refugee Assistance Project, a New York-based advocacy group. “We want to see real action. There are needs right now. But all we see is the administration move more slowly and staying in an exploratory phase, rather than doing something.”

That’s despite the government’s reports by the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, National Security Council and Director of National Intelligence that highlighted “the urgency of expanding current protections and creating new legal pathways to safety for climate-displaced people,” Francis pointed out.

Each year, natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And scientists predict migration will grow as the planet gets hotter. Over the next 30 years, 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported this year.

National security officials also recommended increasing U.S. aid to countries regularly pummeled by extreme weather and strengthening support for U.S. climate scientists and others to track these events.

To that end, the government recently released plans to work with Congress to provide billions of dollars annually to help countries adapt and manage impacts of climate change, especially to those vulnerable to the worst effects.

At the U.S.-Pacific Islands Summit, Biden announced $22 million in funding for climate forecasting and research, and setting up early warning systems in places like Africa, where 60% of nations lack such systems. The administration said it plans to announce more such funding to close that gap at the global COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November.

Environmental disasters now displace more people than conflict within their own countries, though no nation in the world offers asylum to climate migrants.

The White House’s 37-page Report on the Impact of Climate Change on Migration was the first time the U.S. government outlined the inextricable links between climate change and migration.

Released in October 2021 as Biden headed to the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the report recommended steps, such as monitoring the flows of people forced to leave their homes because of natural disasters and working with Congress on a groundbreaking plan that would add droughts, floods, wildfires and other climate-related reasons in considering refugee status.

The report came a year after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees published legal guidance that opened the door for offering protection to people displaced by the effects of global warming.

The guidance said climate change should be taken into consideration in certain scenarios when it intersects with violence, though the document stopped short of redefining the 1951 Refugee Convention, which provides legal protection only to people fleeing persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.

The U.N. refugee agency acknowledged that temporary protection may be insufficient if a country becomes uninhabitable because of drought or rising seas, and suggested certain climate-displaced people could be eligible for resettlement.

Last month, more than a dozen humanitarian organizations sent a letter to the White House urging the government to give priority to refugee populations currently affected by climate change. The people include: South Sudanese and Ethiopians in Sudan where recurring drought and floods exacerbated by climate change threaten refugee camps. And Rohingya in Bangladesh where refugee camps are also at risk due to flooding.

But the Biden administration has not responded to the request, the organizations said.

“It was a positive step that the administration recognized that they should work on this issue, which is a first, so now they should make good on … that promise,” said Kayly Ober of Refugees International.

Migration is part of humanity’s adaptation to climate change and will become one of many tools for survival, so governments need now to plan accordingly, advocates say.

Humanitarian organizations provided the administration with reports on how to train immigration officers to do a better job at taking climate change into account when interviewing people for asylum or refugee status. They also offered analysis of possible legal pathways, such as expanding temporary protective status and humanitarian parole, which have allowed people fleeing natural disasters and conflicts in a limited list of countries to live and work in the United States for a few years.

The U.S. should establish a resettlement category for migrants who do not meet the refugee definition but who are unable to return safely to their homelands due to environmental risks, according to experts.

Worsening weather conditions are exacerbating poverty, crime and political instability, fueling tensions over dwindling resources from Africa to Latin America. But often climate change is overlooked as a contributing factor for people fleeing their homelands. According to the U.N. refugee agency, 90% of refugees under its mandate are from countries “on the front lines of the climate emergency.”

But so far there has been slow progress in the U.S. adopting policies recognizing them.

“Where we have some movement unfortunately is only in the uptick of people forcibly displaced in the world,” said Amali Tower, founder of the advocacy group Climate Refugees.

Source: After raising hope, Biden still lacks climate migration plan

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ICYMI: Home Office reclassifies modern slavery as illegal immigration issue

2022/10/20 Leave a comment

Despite all the chaos in UK politics, the UK government still has time for further policy errors:

The Home Office has taken the modern slavery brief away from the minister responsible for safeguarding and classed it as an “illegal immigration and asylum” issue, updated online ministerial profiles show.

The move is seen as a clear sign that the department is doubling down on Suella Braverman’s suggestion that people are “gaming” the modern slavery system and that victims of the crime are no longer being prioritised.

The previous safeguarding minister, Rachel Maclean, had modern slavery on her official list of ministerial responsibilities but her successor, Mims Davies, has no mention of the crime on her list. Instead, modern slavery is listed at the bottom of the “illegal immigration and asylum” brief of immigration minister Tom Pursglove.

Under Theresa May, the government pledged to be world leaders in combating modern slavery but Braverman said last week that trafficking claims from “people gaming the system” were “derailing the UK’s policy on illegal migration”.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “The largest single group of modern slavery victims under the referral system last year were British children – including those who were exploited through county lines

“The evidence shows the majority of exploitation takes place in the UK rather than across borders.

“The government should be treating this as an enforcement and safeguarding issue and taking stronger action against the crime of modern slavery wherever it takes place.”

Charities working with victims say characterising the crime as an illegal immigration issue is dangerous. More than a quarter of all people identified as potential modern slavery victims are British, according to official statistics.

Olivia Field, head of policy at the British Red Cross, said: “Modern slavery is a crime that can impact people no matter where they are from or where they are in the world.

“From our work supporting people who have been through horrific experiences including sexual exploitation and human trafficking, we know there are urgent improvements needed to better protect and support survivors.

“So it doesn’t become any harder for people to get the help they need, we would urge the lens on tackling modern slavery to be a safeguarding one focused on protecting people impacted by this crime, as opposed to being treated as an immigration issue.”

Despite Braverman’s claims of people “gaming” the system, 97% of all modern slavery referrals concluded in the first half of this year were confirmed as genuine by the authorities.

The home secretary’s comments were contradicted by the chief executive of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, Elysia McCaffrey, who said: “We don’t see people gaming the system … What we see is vulnerable people who are being exploited by opportunists and criminals.”

Kate Roberts, head of policy at Focus on Labour Exploitation, said: “Modern Slavery is a serious crime which is carried out against individuals and to see it as an immigration matter is wrong and is risky.

“Preventing and addressing modern slavery should take a person centred approach – starting with safeguarding and ensuring the rights of potential victims. While restricted or insecure immigration status can be abused by exploiters who use immigration detention as a threat against seeking help from the authorities, this is only one of many tools traffickers use, as evidenced by the fact that many British people are victims of trafficking.”

In another sign that the government is no longer prioritising tackling the crime, there has been no independent anti-slavery commissioner in post since Sara Thornton left in April, despite it being a legal requirement since the introduction of the Modern Slavery Act in 2015.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are committed to tackling the heinous crime of modern slavery and in the UK we have a world-leading response. However, it is clear people are abusing our system when they have no right to be here, in order to frustrate their removal.”

Source: Home Office reclassifies modern slavery as illegal immigration issue

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Dangzalan: Half-Cooked, and Under-Seasoned: IRCC’s Haste To Move to Online Applications for Permanent Residence

2022/10/19 Leave a comment

More on the online hopefully teething problems:

Before the pandemic, I stumbled into a pub and ordered their buttermilk fried chicken with waffles. The server happily took my order, and after about ten minutes, the order arrived. I was impressed with the speed. When I took my first bite, I suddenly spit it out – it was raw, with blood gushing through the undercooked flesh. It was not at all ready. It was clearly done in a hurry. In life, most things that are rushed do not end well. This is also true for institutions.

On September 1, 2022, IRCC came out with a news release, “Transitioning to online applications for permanent residence.” The announcement was promising until you read on: “…Starting on September 23, 2022 … IRCC will begin transitioning to 100% digital applications for most permanent residence programs.”

Twitter went into a frenzy – in just three weeks, applications for Permanent Residence will only be accepted through IRCC’s application portal. While the portal was soft-launched on March 31, 2021, the impression at the time was that IRCC would continue to iron out the problems with the online infrastructure. In the meantime, the department continued to accept paper applications for permanent residence.

We in the immigration bar understood this to be a good sign: IRCC appeared committed to ensuring that the transition to a digital application platform will have minimal technical issues at best. The backstop was there – in that people who have technical issues or are simply unsure if they trust the new platforms had the choice to submit a paper application.

We have also experienced nightmare scenarios where applicants needed to submit their applications on the same day but were not able to because of technical issues. The list of reasons is long, but it includes issues ranging from the website crashing, to the lack of space to submit complex humanitarian and compassionate applications that require heavy papering of evidence, to sudden portal outages, to files not being accepted due to ill-explained formatting issues.

Folks who have been trapped in these nightmare scenarios stand to lose a lot: they lose their status in Canada and endure long family separations. Sometimes the remedy involves filing a separate application that increases the ever-growing inventory of applications. Transitioning so recklessly to a zero-sum online intake system may have the unintended consequence of exacerbating the already politically toxic immigration backlog. Surely the Minister or the Prime Minister’s Office will not want this.

Make no mistake: this transition is a critical part of IRCC’s push for digital transformation in the department. Converting applications from paper to digital will accelerate the collection of big data that will allow IRCC to develop further its deployment of advanced analytics and machine learning in triaging an ever-growing pile of applications. Let’s also be very clear: electronic application platforms allow for a more accessible government. E-governance is generally a good thing. But this requires a proper and well-thought-out strategy for the deployment of technology. What is not good is a forcible ramming through the door of a system that has no emergency backstops.

To be sure, a lot of advocates have long pushed for online applications for Permanent Resident candidates. Yet the manner of hurried and almost cloak-and-dagger execution, with portals still riddled by technical problems, does not bode well among advocates and members of the bar.

It’s not too late. IRCC and Minister Sean Fraser can still put a pause to this. Minister Fraser should delay the compulsory implementation until a dialogue can be opened between the department and its stakeholders to hear what the issues are. As always, we at CILA are open to collaborating with the department to ensure that this project enjoys the highest possible chance of success.

Source: Half-Cooked, and Under-Seasoned: IRCC’s Haste To Move to Online Applications for Permanent Residence

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With 271,000 vacant jobs, Quebec business leaders challenge immigration targets

2022/10/19 Leave a comment

Nothing new here except the degree to which the CAQ will revised levels in response to ongoing business pressures:
Quebec business leaders say newly re-elected Premier François Legault will have no choice but to accept more than 50,000 immigrants per year  — a target the premier has said would be “suicidal” for the province’s French culture.
“Unless you want to downsize your economy and you’re ready to let go of some companies and even some regions (in Quebec), … you have no other way than to increase integration levels,” said Véronique Proulx, president and CEO of Quebec Manufacturers & Exporters.

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Ditchley Conference: Impact of Food Security on Migration and How to Respond

2022/10/19 Leave a comment

I recently had the pleasure of attending this conference (virtually). Interesting and stimulating discussions, high level summary here.

My working paper for the conference is below:

There is little doubt that migration pressures will increase given greater food insecurity in countries and regions that are expected to be most exposed to climate change. While this is mainly with respect to the global south, even more temperate zones are being affected as recent extreme weather events have demonstrated. How governments and societies should respond is an easier question than how can they respond given domestic and international politics, with the ongoing challenges of climate change being perhaps the most pertinent example.

From an immigration perspective, there are some realities that need to be considered:

• Increased political and social polarization, reflecting driven by social media and political tactics at both national and international levels, resulting in greater mis- and disinformation;

• Increased economic and social inequalities within countries;

• In many countries, immigration is divisive politically, Canada being one of the rare exceptions. Irregular arrivals rather than more managed immigration tend to provoke more negative public reactions;

• Migration policies and programs of the global north are largely designed for the benefit of receiving countries, with little to no attention to the needs of sending countries and potential migrants. The overall focus on addressing the demographics of aging societies as well as the recent focus on healthcare labour shortages and immigration are examples.

• Public opinion in Western countries generally, but not exclusively, favours more “familiar” migrants with perceived shared values as recently seen in the case of Ukrainian refugees in contrast to other groups. While consistency of treatment must be the objective, the reality is more complex; and,

• There is generally greater public support for economic immigrants who contribute directly to the economy in sectors as diverse as healthcare, tech and agriculture than for refugees and asylum seekers, as the benefits are more clearly perceived.

Canadian perspective

Canada’s geography has largely provided a barrier to large scale irregular migration compared to most other countries given the USA to the south, oceans to the east, west, and north, making it easier for Canada to manage migration flows and maintain public confidence.

While my fellow Canadians at the conference may disagree, some of the factors that will influence Canadian public reaction to larger scale immigration include:

• The degree to which irregular arrivals, perceived as queue jumping, particularly those at land crossings between official border points, continue to increase (2022 average to date of 3,000 per month), with birth tourism raising similar issues;

• While public opinion research shows general support for immigration and a general understanding of the need for immigrants to address labour shortages and demographic aging, there is less support for refugees and family class, and some worries regarding immigrant group cultures;

• Given the large numbers of immigrants and their descendants, concentrated in electoral districts (41 ridings out of 338 are visible minority majority ridings, with another 16 ridings over 40 percent) and the Canadian political first-past-the-post system, no political party can win an election without their support;

• Immigrants often perceive irregular arrivals as people jumping the queue rather than applying as they did and there is a diversity of views among immigrant and visible minority groups on overall immigration levels;

• The current government has ambitious immigration targets (increasing 341,000 pre-pandemic to 450,000 by 2024) that enjoys broad support among stakeholders and have so far attracted little to no criticism by mainstream political parties (Quebec, which selects its economic immigrants, is far more restrictive); and

• The ability (arguably inability) for the government to deliver these increases has become an issue with large backlogs across all immigration programs.

Possible broader lessons from Canada

Mitigation through greater support to countries with food insecurity and greater climate change impacts may reduce pressures on receiving countries. While it is likely impossible reduce long- term pressures, the impact ideally can be made more gradual allowing more time to prepare and increase absorptive capacity.

Key to public support is the perception that migration flows are being properly managed and not just arriving at the border. To the extent that migration and refugee flows have orderly processes and procedures, public understanding and support should be easier to attain. This is clearly easier for some countries than for others but even countries that have geographic and other barriers can expect to be tested more and more.

Messaging that links immigration to a country’s interests (e.g., labour shortages) will be more powerful than general humanitarian messaging. Policies and programs that triage food and climate refugees based upon their ability to contribute to the receiving country economy and society are likely to be better received than those without such selection criteria.

Stories that focus on individual situations have greater influence than more overall analysis for the public. For example, the death of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi galvanized support for accepting more refugees during the 2015 Canadian election and, more recently, the likely murder of Iranian Mahsa Amini over how she wore her hijab has galvanized protests in and outside Iran. Given that

the impact of individual examples and stories is more short-term, broader evidence and analysis are needed for governments and sophisticated stakeholders in order to effect sustainable change.

In short, longer term migration pressures are similar to climate change in terms of the political challenges at national and international levels. However, the Global Compact for Migration only provides a framework in contrast to the legally binding Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Moreover, the longer history of global and national environmental debates and negotiations has resulted in greater political consensus regarding the need for international cooperation to address climate change.

Issues related to climate change are largely economic in terms of the changes required while international migration is as much about more complex social change as it is about simple economic change, as we see in various debates over immigrant and national values.

Given that current narratives in receiving countries have focussed on economic benefits of immigration for receiving countries, shifting the focus to the benefits and costs to both receiving and sending countries would be extremely difficult given polarized public opinion and politics.

Source: https://www.ditchley.com/sites/default/files/2022-10/Andrew%20Ditchley%20Conference%20October%202022.pdf

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